Creating Comics in the Virtual Classroom If you have read my post 3 Ways to Use Comic Strips as Writing Scaffolds then you know I am a huge fan of using Comic Strips with ELs as a way to incorporate both STEAM and language instruction. There are no limits to the myriad ways you can use them for instruction- story mapping, retelling, pre-writing, practice and application, tickets out the door, etc. Typically, creating comic strip templates for printing can be easily done in Power Point on an 8½ x 11 slide with a few rectangular shapes and speech bubbles thrown in. With the arrival of COVI ..read more

SIOP in the Virtual Classroom We are a year into virtual teaching and learning and in many cases, still struggling. Most of us continue to hold out hope that teaching virtually is a temporary situation and that soon we can return to what we fondly remember as “normal.” And yet, virtual instruction is undoubtedly here to stay.  There will be parents, for a myriad of reasons, who will continue to opt into virtual schooling after this prolonged break from brick-and-mortar.  Which then leads us to the question, “How do we best serve ELs through virtual instruction.” This is still a burg ..read more

Why Modeling the Use of Standard English Is Important for Classroom Teachers It’s everywhere these days.  All you have to do is turn on the television or radio, listen in on conversations at the mall or log onto social media and you’re surrounded by non-standard English.  For better or worse, we’ve become increasingly casual as a society, with blogs and social media taking the place of more formal news outlets while texting and email have replaced standard letters. With this evolution has come the increasing evidence (if not prevalence) of other forms of English. Often referred to as non-st ..read more

Choosing Your Hill to Die On As a coach, I see this in classrooms all the time- teacher’s frustrated and angry over very inconsequential student behaviors. Small things that can add up to big shifts in teacher feelings and attitudes.  As a new teacher, my hill was pencils.  My students were forever coming to class without writing implements.  Really, a pencil was the only thing my students needed to participate in our day. One simple item, a ten cent piece of wood and graphite, upon which participation hinged. But for some reason pencils were always elusive and in short supply. Where they ..read more

Many teachers have questions about retaining English Learners.  At one point many immigrant children were unilaterally retained, and even sometimes put back several grades with much younger children. While that is no longer the case in most districts, research suggests that English Learners are still retained at higher rates than their native English speaking peers. This is despite a history of federal Civil Rights legislation, starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which states that a person cannot be discriminated against on the basis of National Origin (of which language has been de ..read more

Did you know you can use free online handwriting worksheet generators to customize vocabulary writing practice for your Newcomers? These sites are easy to use and infinitely adaptable to your students’ unique needs. If your newcomer is not familiar with the Roman alphabet, s/he will need to spend some time tracing and/or writing letters to become intimately familiar with them (the alphabet’s letter names, shapes, and sounds should be over taught to automaticity). Handwriting worksheet generator sites will allow you to print the letter repeatedly for practice.  They offer the option to prin ..read more

What Is Comprehensible Input? If you work with English Learners perhaps you’ve heard the term comprehensible input before. Comprehensible input is the foundation of effective instruction for English Learners. Simply put, it’s teaching students can understand, whatever their level of English language. It is not one thing, but rather answers the question for each individual teacher, “How can I modify or what can I add to the language to make meaning clearer?”  While there are some best practices when working with English Learners, they are a diverse group, who require individual consideration f ..read more

Cultural Norms Can Cause Classroom Clashes Cultural norms impact not just the way we interact socially, but the way we think and feel, the way we perceive situations we encounter, and the way we react to them. Consider the chart below: Download a PDF here: Cultural Norms Chart Most people focus immediately on the surface features of culture because they are the most readily identifiable. Some features of culture are very obvious- dress, food, music, language and religion provide members with a collective identity. Others are much more subtle- such as beliefs about one’s role in society, notion ..read more

Getting Parents through the Door: Parent Engagement That Works In the last few years we’ve seen the importance of parent Involvement emphasized in relevant literature and law.  Schools have realized that they cannot do it alone and that parent-school partnerships result in the best outcomes for student learning.  But just what is parent involvement? Educators may be surprised to find that parents and teachers often have very different views on just what parent involvement entails.  Iv’e written before about how I often hear teachers say that they lack parental support for their English Learne ..read more

Spanish Cognates for Scaffolding Classroom Instruction Many teachers believe that lowering the difficulty of classroom language benefits Newcomers, and in some cases, it may.  For students learning English coming from Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian) however, that may not necessarily be the case. Those more difficult words might be better, because they could represent cognates. Cognates are words that are similar or even the same across languages.  Most Romance language cognates in English are found in Tier II and Tier III vocabulary words (academic languag ..read more